Late realizations

[Jonny2x4]

zako/雑魚 is basically a term for underling-type villain characters. It's not necessarily a videogame-exclusive term though. It can be applied to movies, manga and such like the stormtroopers from the Star Wars movies for example or the mohawked punks from Hokuto no Ken.

That is the first time I've seen the term codified in-game - can't recall it appearing elsewhere, at least not in English. Cute!

Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance has a few VR missions titled "Zako Survival" and the first CPU team that challenges you in Super Dodge Ball for the Neo-Geo is called the "Zako Team". I might had seen the term thrown around in some sound test for a videogame too.

[BIL]

Ah yes - can vaguely recall seeing "zako out" in sound tests, possibly accompanied by "boss out." Gonna see if I can find any, haha.

EDIT: from a quick google it seems Super Shinobi II may have been one.

[Jonny2x4]

I've seen some prototype screenshots of Final Fight where the small fry enemies are all called ZAKO XX, with XX being a hex identifier.

[6t8k]

It occurred to me that Insomniac must have been inspired by Invader Zim in significant ways when making Ratchet & Clank (it's such a popular series - is this somewhat common knowledge? at least I've found nothing having an official blessing that would point to it, but apparently, many comparisons were drawn of otherwise noteworthy origin)

Aside from many ideational/(art-)design-wise similarities, Richard Horvitz, who voiced Zim, also voiced the Zoni, which first appeared in later R&C iterations, however.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Nintendont GameCube disks/ROMs loader for the Wii(U) supports Classic Controller Pro without any arcane fiddling with the stuff, just "out of the box". Oh, I READ that CCP was supported back when installing all the homebrew on my Wii, but - for some reason - I got the impression it takes extra steps to get it running. Nope, stuff's trivial.
Long story short, two games pretty precious to me - F-Zero GX and Burnout 2: Point of Impact - are suddenly vying for my attention more than ever before, since both take a lot of index finger action, which sucks dick if abundant on the original GameCube controller. Now, the first Super Monkey Ball, as well as the FIRST Burnout (both just a precious GameCube titles in my book), will favour the GameCube stock controller still, as not nearly as much of an index finger cramp/twitch is required in either.

In other news, my current day job (takes a lot of a forklift driving) turned out pretty good for my (arcade-style) videogaming skills. I'd always hoped so, for much profound reasons too, but now it can be considered empirically proven.

[Shelcoof]

I just realized there's an ST-V Sega Saturn game called Guardian Force.

I always got this title confused with some other game for the Saturn that I can't remember the title of off the top of my head.

This is probably the reason why I just discovered this game. Watched some replays of this and it really appeals to me. I've always love that graphical uniqueness that Saturn hardware produced.

Trying to figure out what would be the best way to play this.

- On real ST-V hardware? [Find myself a Motherboard plus multicart or real cart]
- Grab a Sega Saturn Copy? [Ebay prices are pretty darn high at the moment]
- Emulation on shmup mame? [I haven't kept up with any current MAME builds unfortunately]

Thoughts?

[BIL]

According to trap15, the STV cart has significant, inherent input lag. I can't tell offhand if the Saturn port (a true port, naturally) shares this issue... it's the only version I've ever played, and it's an innately heavier-handling STG than the norm. Kino scored 13m on it, close to the 14m WR, so it's certainly not unplayable either way. Might be worth investigating first - I'd burn a Saturn ISO in these situations, yarr!

Kino's opinions on lag:

Reading Alex's notes on the de-lag patch, I surmise that the lag on the PCB (which is nearly identical to the MAME lag, allegedly) was caused from porting the Saturn's code verbatim to the arcade.

It's a really cool game either way, especially if you like your ground-based and/or multidirectional shooters.

(off-topic, I wish cool people wouldn't delete their posts. )

[Shelcoof]

According to trap15, the STV cart has significant, inherent input lag. I can't tell offhand if the Saturn port (a true port, naturally) shares this issue... it's the only version I've ever played, and it's an innately heavier-handling STG than the norm. Kino scored 13m on it, close to the 14m WR, so it's certainly not unplayable either way. Might be worth investigating first - I'd burn a Saturn ISO in these situations, yarr!

Kino's opinions on lag:

Reading Alex's notes on the de-lag patch, I surmise that the lag on the PCB (which is nearly identical to the MAME lag, allegedly) was caused from porting the Saturn's code verbatim to the arcade.

It's a really cool game either way, especially if you like your ground-based and/or multidirectional shooters.

(off-topic, I wish cool people wouldn't delete their posts. )

This is some great info here. Really appreciate the reply
I was really debating on which option to take.

I tried the game out on MAME and oh yhaa you can feel the lag for sure. It to me was pretty rough as it felt like I was playing on a Sanwa JLF

I was wondering how accurate the emulation of Guardian Force is on MAME as well. If it's close enough to the PCB I could probably use it to gauge whether or not I want to own the original Saturn version.

I'm not too big on playing burnt Disc... plus I don't have the tools to do so either.

But so far I can't believe I missed a game like this
Everything about it so far really suits my taste perfectly.

[Sumez]

I had no idea mame even supported Saturn/STV

[M.Knight]

Nintendont GameCube disks/ROMs loader for the Wii(U) supports Classic Controller Pro without any arcane fiddling with the stuff, just "out of the box". Oh, I READ that CCP was supported back when installing all the homebrew on my Wii, but - for some reason - I got the impression it takes extra steps to get it running. Nope, stuff's trivial.
Long story short, two games pretty precious to me - F-Zero GX and Burnout 2: Point of Impact - are suddenly vying for my attention more than ever before, since both take a lot of index finger action, which sucks dick if abundant on the original GameCube controller. Now, the first Super Monkey Ball, as well as the FIRST Burnout (both just a precious GameCube titles in my book), will favour the GameCube stock controller still, as not nearly as much of an index finger cramp/twitch is required in either.

Yeah, you can easily play GC games with the CC thanks to Nintendon't. It's very convenient and a good way to alleviate for the terrible GC D-pad when playing 2D GC games without having to shell out for the Hori controller. Playing the very few GC shmups with a proper D-pad is so much better.

On a side-note, the Wii CC Pro doesn't have the analog sensitivity on its bumpers so if you are on WiiU, that console's CC Pro may have some advantage over it depending on the game. I know I don't like analog triggers/bumpers since I tend to assign bomb to them when playing shmups so the delay may get in the way. But for something like F-Zero I am sure it's essential.

[ED-057]

English version of DLsite has English versions of some things, while viewing the same product on the jp site offers no hints about this. But you need a separate account for each site!? The number of sales displayed for a product are obviously separate as well.

[6t8k]

[BrianC]

The game gear Popils was actually released in the US and Europe, as well as Japan. The US version seems to be especially rare. I was especially surprised to find out it was released in the US.

[Sumez]

I've really considered getting this game simply due to the identity of its creator - but damn, it would be the only Game Gear game I'd ever be interested in getting. Probably not worth buying a handheld for.

[Blinge]

Whoa! Whats left and which came first?

There's a staaaaaarrrmaaaan waiting in the sky

[Sumez]

You mean what's to the right?
Left is definitely Dogyuun, I have no idea what the other one is.

[tomwhite2004]

That's Earthbound on the right.

[BrianC]

I've really considered getting this game simply due to the identity of its creator - but damn, it would be the only Game Gear game I'd ever be interested in getting. Probably not worth buying a handheld for.

TBH, It's not my favorite handheld. Not a whole lot of "must haves" for the system and some games are better played on SMS. I do like the Shinobi games on it quite a bit, though. Too bad the FC and PCE versions of Popils were never released. The former is actually the original version.

[6t8k]

Dogyuun: October 1992
Mother 2: August 1994

What's more, in both games, you transform into a one-time robotic form before traversing the alien top dog's last bastion, fending off the final androidic guardians in an ultima ratio surge of your soon to be exhausted resources.

---

Bonus:

Spoiler

[BIL]

Cool.

[6t8k]

Word!

Here's another interesting pair of semblances emanating from Metal Black (in part thematically overlapping with The art and spirit of ATTRACT/TITLE/GAME OVER).
Arguably a little less profound due to their mere visual nature, nonetheless I can absolutely see how its utterly breathtaking psychedelic boss explosions could inspire other developers.

Heads-up: heavy visual noise (⌐■_■)

Spoiler

That would motivate the following overview:

[BIL]

Yeah, as a hard-bitten Metal Blackologist, the first time I saw Eliminate Down's stage transitions I was totally going AWW SHEEEIT

[Mortificator]

By sheer coincidence I came here to post a Taito realization of my own.

So stage 4 of Gun Frontier includes a movie house. It seems to be random what's playing on its screen... you might see a Western, you might see Bruce Lee. Today I was playing for the first time in years and got a film I'd never seen before: Darius Part 22.

[WelshMegalodon]

The Ninjawarriors Again has a built-in stage select code.

When I think of all the time I spent sleepwalking through the first half of the game just to practice Phobos and Deimos...

[6t8k]

BIL: haha yeah, I had the reverse experience, have to confess that I discovered Metal Black after Eliminate Down

As for the latter, I think it'd be interesting to learn more about the developer's history – there's almost no info on this at all.
It's an uncommonly solid game all through and filled with numerous bold, memorable moments. Such ability does not manifest itself out of nowhere (usually), and where did it go?


Mortificator: fascinating! Was looking up Darius Part 22 and couldn't find anything at first save for one reference on HG101, stating that it was shown on "Takatsuna Senba’s (now defunct) website", but not giving away a link.
I felt as though there might've been more info on there that got lost during the transition to the new design, and sure enough, instead at least a site showing Metal Black/Project Gun Frontier 2: Tarabar Edition had been linked (now dead, which wasn't yet the case in 2017 so not sure why that was removed, but the Wayback Machine's got us covered!). Stuff loads kinda slow through there, so I saw the placeholder text of the last image (showing the title screen), which says "画面22". With still no signs of Darius Part 22 in sight, for an instant the thought came by whether everything just could have been a stupid misunderstanding

Eventually found it though: archive (via).

[ED-057]

I just found out about FMPMD2000. http://c60.la.coocan.jp/download.html

The funny part is that I already have a ton of these music files on my harddisk that I downloaded in let's see... 2007. Never figured out how to play them and forgot they were even there. Until now.

edit: something else...

A harddisk I bought in 2013 had a jumper preinstalled. I didn't know what it was for and didn't mess with it. Now I find out it was a "compatibility mode" jumper that limited the speed to 1.5Gbps instead of the rated 3.0Gbps.

[BrianC]

I watched the Little Bamm Bamm episode of Flintstones again. I remembered the Flinstones version of Perry Mason(ary), but didn't realize there was also a Flintstones version of Hamilton Berger (Brontosaurus Berger). While the art is based off the TV show, they were not voiced by the same actors. Masonary was voiced by Don Messick (Scooby Doo, Papa Smurf, Dr. Benton Quest) in a voice very similar to his Ranger Smith voice. Hal Smith (Otis Campbell on Andy Griffith) voiced Berger. Hal Smith later voiced Santa Claus on A Flintstone Christmas.

[Ruldra]

Replayed original Flashback recently. In that screen where you place the atomic charge deep in the alien planet, you can get past the two green flames by simply crouching and rolling over them, it won't trigger the death animation. Meaning you can leave the teleport receiver right next to the door leading to the spaceship and skip the whole escape sequence.

Also, no matter where you left the receiver, if you put the teleport control on the ground, the receiver will spawn on top of it too.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Replayed original Flashback recently. In that screen where you place the atomic charge deep in the alien planet, you can get past the two green flames by simply crouching and rolling over them, it won't trigger the death animation. Meaning you can leave the teleport receiver right next to the door leading to the spaceship and skip the whole escape sequence.

Also, no matter where you left the receiver, if you put the teleport control on the ground, the receiver will spawn on top of it too.

Which version? Might not work in every one of them.

[Ruldra]

I saw someone doing it on the SNES version, then tried it on the Steam one and it worked just fine.